Mike Stoops fell on his sword for Lincoln Riley
NORMAN — Mike Stoops gave Lincoln Riley a hug Saturday in the bowels of the Cotton Bowl and apologized for OU’s defensive debacle. Texas had just beaten the Sooners 48-45.
The next day, the defensive coordinator fell on his sword and told the head coach he had to do what was best for the Sooners, and Riley dismissed Stoops as defensive coordinator.
“I told Lincoln I was so sorry after (the) game,” Stoops told The Oklahoman via text message on Tuesday. “We hugged each other, and I said let’s talk tomorrow.”
They met Sunday, just Stoops and Riley, and
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Stoops wrote that he “told him I understand (he had) to do what’s right for the program.” Thus the dismissal.
Riley on Monday addressed at length the decision to fire Stoops but didn’t dive deep.
“I would never get too much into the internal details,” Riley said. “I will say this: Mike Stoops cares about this program deeply, cares about the people here. He’s had a long, extremely successful run here. He wants nothing more than the best for this program and the best for the people, the players here. This decision was my decision.”
Riley also declined to say whether he had spoken with Bob Stoops, Mike’s brother, before or after the dismissal. Bob Stoops, OU’s head coach from 1999-2016, brought in Riley as offensive coordinator in 2015.
“I think, just because of the nature of my and Bob’s relationship, obviously Mike being his brother, I don’t know that I’d feel comfortable saying either way, honestly,” Riley said.
Riley called the decision “probably the hardest day I’ve had here as a head coach for sure. Tough cause I know what Mike’s meant to this program, the kind of guy he is, the friend he’s been to me. I’ve been through a lot together with him. Very difficult, but at the same time my job’s to make the best decision for this program and for this team right now.
“I just, at the end of the day, I felt like we needed a new voice. We needed just a little bit of a spark. I thought that making the change was right for that reason, and also because I felt good about the guys we have in this room and a plan for the rest of this season. This team’s got a lot in front of them. This team could make a run here. I think we all feel that. So there was, I didn’t think about anything down the line. It was all about this team and what’s best right now, and that’s what I felt was best.”
Riley admitted that his relationship with Bob Stoops made the decision “tough. It’s real, and as much as you want to take the human element out of it, we’re all humans. The fact that it’s Bob’s brother, did that make it harder? In some ways.
“But more than that just simply taking Bob out of it, just my relationship with Mike and Mike’s relationship with me and the run we’ve had here together — defensive and offensive coordinators can either be at each other’s throats because you’re against each other the whole year and then you’re trying to work together the whole season and it can be either really bad or really good. With he and I, he was so good to me when I came in here especially when we stunk in the first half of that first year and I’ll never forget that.
“We’ve had a great relationship and he’s been a great friend and it was one of the toughest things I’ve ever had to do.”